'The Woodspurge' by Rosetti
In September, 1848, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt and others founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,...
H. G. Wells and 'The Red Room'
H. G. Wells. the scientific rationalist and author, famous for the novels The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, The Time Machine and...
Great Expectations
In Charles Dickens' Ironic masterpiece Great Expectations , it's not difficult to spot our protagonist. The opening of the novel labours...
The 'Turn' in the Character
If we can grasp the rather strange idea that characters in fiction are not ‘people’ at all, but constructs, almost mechanical in nature,...
The Mediaeval Heavens Part 1
We’re so used to thinking of the physical universe as obeying certain ‘laws’ that we can get muddled about the idea of it. A ‘law’...
'Eucatastrophe' in Stories
Consider the most powerful, memorable moments in your own reading. Think for a moment about the scenes in your favourite books or films...
Blake's Battle to Build 'Jerusalem'
’Jerusalem’, by William Blake, from the preface of ‘Milton a Poem’, first printed in 1804, was originally called ‘And Did Those Feet in...
Tolkien and 'Final Participation'
According to Owen Barfield, close friend of C. S. Lewis and a member of the Inklings group, as well as being an influence upon Tolkien,...
